Following an early misappropriation and financial snafu, it turns out the Team Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund was, for the most part, properly administered and allocated, with less than six-tenths of one percent in error.
That’s according to more details released from a special examination and audit from the office of State Auditor Mike Harmon. On Tuesday afternoon, he released more than 40 pages of findings after about $239,000 in mistaken payments were distributed.
The review of the fund by was requested by lawmakers in July after reports of misdirected payments from the fund. The Team Western Kentucky Tornado Fund, which was sourced by private donations and gave cash payments to tornado victims, had disbursed about $42 million by the end of the fiscal year in June, the report said.
Harmon said more than 200 checks issued from the fund went to Kentuckians who either didn’t request the monies, or said they didn’t have a need for the funds.
This accounted for nearly $240,000 of the $42.3 million expended — an error rate of 0.57%, the auditor's office said.
Auditors also found duplicate payments, payments to those later deemed ineligible and overpayments. Those payments mostly stemmed from the $1,000 “Second Assistance Payments,” which had an error rate of 2.14% totaling $213,000.
Of those checks, 194 of them totaling $200,000 were canceled because the recipient rejected the payment.
As of September, more than 1,700 checks issued prior to June 30 remained outstanding.
The report said officials with the Kentucky Public Protection Cabinet, which handled the distribution of funds, were “aware of their oversight responsibilities" and put control mechanisms in place to ensure the monies were sent only to eligible individuals.
A separate review by the inspector general in the state's Finance and Administration Cabinet said the funds were “managed properly," according to a media release from the cabinet on Tuesday.
“After a nearly four-month review, we found that the funds were managed with complete transparency and in accordance with the law,” the release said.
The auditor's report found the mistaken payments included duplicates, payments sent to ineligible people and overpayments. The majority of the mistaken payments were $1,000 secondary payments to victims. Those Second Assistance payments had an error rate of just over 2%, the report said.
The auditors also looked at a flood relief fund set up after the eastern Kentucky flooding in 2022, but that review found no erroneous payments.
Graph provided by the Public Protection Cabinet and the Commonwealth's Accounting System
